Until recently, most of a community's trash and rubbish have gone into a landfill. However, it has been determined that landfills can severely contaminate the environment and they can be expensive to obtain and maintain. Many of them are unline and leak toxic organics into the soil and undergrond water systems. Many landfills are running out of room. It is estimated that more than 400,000 tons of garbage and rubbish are generated each day in the United. States--160,000,000 tons a year, and the amounts of such garbage and rubbish is growing each year.
Waste disposal used to be primarily a local issue. It is now, however, fast become a matter of regional, State and even national concern. Communities everywhere ae scrambling for ways to clean up and dispose of their trash and rubbish.
It has been said that approximately 3.5 lbs of trash are generated each day for each person. This is made up of approximately 36% paper, 11% glass, 11% yard waste, 12% iron, steel and other ferrous metals, 14% food waste, 6% plastic and 10% other organic and non-organic substances. More and more packaging is finding its way into trash while the amount of organic materials is decreasing. In the Northeast, about 650 lbs of packaging are thrown away per individual every year.
Considerable emphasis is now being given to reducing the amount of rubbish that is generated. It is of course impossible to eliminate rubbish entirely. Of the rubbish that must be disposed of, recycling or recovering marketable materials for reuse is considered a highly desirable object. It reduces the amount of waste that has to go into landfill; it gives reusable materials a second life; it saves energy and it may even generate revenue--cash for trash--for a community. It can cost a community $30 to $120 per ton for land fill disposal.
To effectuate recycling it is most desirable to segregate the rubbish as it is being collected, requiring each person depositing his or her rubbish to separate it into appropriate categories such as cardboard, newspaper, aluminum cans, glass of different colors, tin cans and plastics. Various ways have been developed by communities to facilitate this required segregation. Most have created bins for the different categories, and when the bins are filled, have a collection service come in which a truck and a loader of some sort for emptying the bins. This is not very efficient. Also, the communities are required to build and maintain the collection bins and to provide adequate supervision to assure as much as possible that each class of rubbish is placed in its designated bin and that there is co-mingling or contamination. It may cost as much as $45,000.00 to 90,000.00 for a small to medium sized town to build collection bins and have on hand equipment to service them.
The present invention is addressed to this segregating and collection problem.